I'm setting up a new master hard drive for my system, and I need to get some
files off a hard drive that wasn't connected to my computer. I shut down and
disconnected the slave I had installed and put the other hard drive on (which
was configured to be a slave) and booted up. After the windows XP home
edition splash screen, my monitor went black for about 25 seconds before
going into windows. I tried putting my original slave hard drive back on, but
that didn't fix the problem. Since the screen occurs after the XP splash
screen, I thought it could be a problem with windows, and tried reformating
my hard drive and starting over. This fixed the startup problem at first, and
I was able to get windows updates and motherboard, video and sound drivers
installed. However after installing the software for my wireless MX 700 mouse
(and wired keyboard, the wireless keyboard that came with the mouse broke. I
dont think this is the problem, though, since I had previosly been able to
get a good startup time with this mouse/keyboard setup) and restarting I once
again got the black screen after the XP splash screen. Once back in windows I
tried uninstalling all of the software and drivers for my mouse/keyboard, but
this didn't fix the problem. This long black screen druing startup is very
annoying and any help concerning what may be causing the problem or how it
could be fixed would be greatly appreciated.